Open Radar

 
Summary:
iOS 6 Smart Banners only work if the device has an App Store installation of the app in question. To-be-released products, and even Xcode builds of existing products, are not recognized by the smart banner machinery.

Steps to Reproduce:
0) Uninstall any copies of the app to be tested
1) Build and run your smart-banner-supporting app from Xcode
2) Go to your website with smart banner metadata
3) Note the VIEW button, which takes you to the App Store, rather than OPEN
4) Install the app from the App Store
5) Repeat 1)

Expected Results:
Expect smart banners to work all the time.

Actual Results:
Smart banners ONLY work after step 5 — specifically after building from Xcode on top of an App Store installation.

Regression:
iOS 6.0 (10A403)

Notes:
As far as I can tell, this makes Smart Banner testing completely impossible for pre-1.0 App Store apps. Similarly painful for existing products because the tester now needs the Xcode project and codesign / provisioning. This is a nonstarter for end-user beta testing, but even in many workplaces a QA team may not have source access. IPA installations from the Xcode Organizer do not work. Third-party OTA tools like TestFlight and Hockey are similarly out of luck.

Please revise this behavior to work with Debug and Ad-Hoc builds. This should ultimately be linked to the App's Bundle ID on the device side:

1) Safari reads the app-id parameter from the meta tag
2) Safari contacts the App Store for the related bundle ID
3) Safari asks the system if an app with said bundle ID exists

These steps can simply be used as a fallback against the existing current mechanism, rather than replacing it completely.